Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: JW_Halverson on July 16, 2013, 11:53:53 pm
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Couple weeks ago I took a 4" diameter hackberry up to North Dakota to a Rendezvous where I was demonstrating bow building. I split it out using two deer antler wedges and a rock I picked up in camp. After that I demonstrated taking bark off and I reduced the stave slightly.
Well, that is as far as that stave got until this morning. I roughed out the dimensions of the sides, cut her to length, and started drawknifing down the belly. It's rubbery like hackberry, light like hackberry, had bark once upon a time like hackberry, but that's where she loses a wheel and goes nosing off into the ditch at highway speed!
I noticed that the grain was not quite right. Then I noticed that when I was hogging away, it would separate between growth rings and that there was SPONGY EARLY GROWTH! Hackberry is not supposed to have early growth and late growth! It is not supposed to be ring porous like oak, osage, and elm. It is supposed to be ring diffuse like maple, basswood, birch and the like!!!
Right? ???
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All mine is ring porous and saw was the Pennsylvania Hackberry that Blackhawk gave me . Josh
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Oh that's weird because the hackberry I have cut here didn't have any early wood...and the rings were 1/4 inches across. This stuff could compete with some of the best high altitude yew out there!
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All the hackberry I've cut here in Iowa has huge growth rings like half the three quarter inch thick rings But anyways I agree with gun doc same here
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The stuff that has been more porous has taken more set for me. I like the denser stuff, as it performs compression and elastic wise like better bow woods, but it still not near "dense" really.
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I've used/have hackberry from Ohio,Michigan,Kentucky,and ?.....and its all been ring porous wood...just like osage the best hackberry is all about ring ratio....the early wood is nothing but air basically cus its pores are so huge...I like the stuff that has somewhat decent sized latewood with the thinnest layer of early wood possible...tight rings+hackberry=crappy bow wood imho
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If you found spongey, early growth something isn't right, or that's not hackberry.
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All I have used is ring porous and had good growth rings and pretty easy to follow. Like most ring porous woods I prefer the thinest early as possible. :)
Pappy
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tight rings+hackberry=crappy bow wood imho
It has been the exact opposite in my experience with hackberry. The better stuff has had tighter rings with little early growth, cut on drier higher ground that I assume contributes to it's slower growth, and been noticeably denser than the thicker ring faster growing stuff, with more early growth. I have had the same experience with a lot of other woods too, osage included. I hear some folks say osage with thicker rings is better, but performance wise, the osage with tighter rings have been 10 times better.
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May be our arid climate, but none of the HB I've worked had much early wood at all. Some thin ringed and some thicker, but hard to tell the difference between the annual and monthly rings on any of it. Only made a half dozen HB bows or so and some of those were the same tree, so small sample size, but all pretty much the same. Near impossible to stay on one ring. Right there with you TMK on thin v thick Osage. I used to look for the thicker ringed Osage believing it to be better. Not so much any more. I'll take the tight ringed stuff most every time.
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It just seems like wood is so funny, it never wants to stick to a single rule or guide line and always has to break the rules.
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tight rings+hackberry=crappy bow wood imho
It has been the exact opposite in my experience with hackberry. The better stuff has had tighter rings with little early growth, cut on drier higher ground that I assume contributes to it's slower growth, and been noticeably denser than the thicker ring faster growing stuff, with more early growth. I have had the same experience with a lot of other woods too, osage included. I hear some folks say osage with thicker rings is better, but performance wise, the osage with tighter rings have been 10 times better.
Guess I need to clarify what I said and reword it so you don't take one small excerpt of what was said in entirety and misinterpret what I said......and did ya miss the whole paragraph leading up to that statement? And you realize what you said is the same thing I said...so why disagree?
Its all about the percentage of early to late wood...RATIO....(as you know)....what was meant is that wood with very small(less than a 1/32")late wood with the same size or bigger early wood will be less dense wood and not as good for bows as wood with 1/8" late wood rings,and literllay paper thin earlywood....its just a fact..period....thin ringed hackberry makes great longer lengthed bows(what you like to make),but it just doesn't fare well to shorter high stressed designs IMHO...and hackberry and osage are not in the same class because they have different "properties"
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I read what you said, I didn't misinterpret anything you posted, just stating my experience for what it's worth. Like I said, and I have cut more than a couple hackberry trees down, as you and most people on here have I am sure, the thicker ringed hackberry most of the time has almost always been lighter and took more set for me. The thinner ringed hackberry has always been denser and took less set, and made the better bows. I understand about early growth and the ratio of the early growth to late growth. Like I stated above most of the thicker ringed hackberry, or mulberry, or most woods I have cut with thicker rings for that matter, has had a good amount of early wood. A lot of the thinner ringed woods I have cut, the rings have been too thin to see much early wood at all if any, this has been the case a good amount of times with hackberry mulberry and osage, which are the main woods I cut and harvest myself. There has probably been the exception a couple times, but for the most part this is the case. I have made a good couple shorter stressed hackberry bows out of this better hackberry, and posted the bows on here as well. I don't heat treat, as you probably know, and I have not ended up with excessive set by any means, and I sure would not call it crappy bow wood. So, if you are making a broad blanket statement as it seemed to me that all thin ringed hackberry will be crappy bow wood, than yes I guess I do disagree with you, but I was by no means intentionally trying to step into some nasty argument, if there is any possibility that that might be where this is heading. It is understandable that, with wood having such a broad spectrum of variance from region to region, tree to tree, piece to piece, that not all of our experiences are going to be the same. That is why I posted this as a follow up:
It just seems like wood is so funny, it never wants to stick to a single rule or guide line and always has to break the rules.
Anyway, peace love and all the best brother, and I mean that. :)
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Hackberry used to be in the elm family if that makes any difference. I've found it to be ring porous myself.
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@ tmk...No big deal man ;) :) ...when I think of "tight ringed", I think of like the picture on page 26 in tbb1 where the rings are so small its hard to distinguish them and all you really see is early wood..and that's because it is basically 80+% early wood...I'm sure the ratio of what you used was/is much better....and I don't disagree with anything your saying cus were saying the same thing ;) my experiences with most all porous wood is the same...its all about ratio...and I design accordingly,and you can still make good bows with even poor ratio wood ;)
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@ tmk...No big deal man ;) :) ...when I think of "tight ringed", I think of like the picture on page 26 in tbb1 where the rings are so small its hard to distinguish them and all you really see is early wood..and that's because it is basically 80+% early wood...I'm sure the ratio of what you used was/is much better....and I don't disagree with anything your saying cus were saying the same thing ;) my experiences with most all porous wood is the same...its all about ratio...and I design accordingly,and you can still make good bows with even poor ratio wood ;)
:) It figures, me of all people would be the one to try to get into an argument with someone saying the same thing, lol. As a curious note, most of the better hackberry bow wood I have cut and better bow wood in general I have cut up in a hilly area over looking my little town of hamilton called "the nob", steve from middletown on here might know where I am talking about if he's familiar with hamilton. (neighboring citys). I'm thinking the hills have most of the water drain and run off so they grow slower with thinner rings. The lesser quality bow wood I have cut has come mostly from an area that gets all the run off from a road above it, and has a lot of wet areas where water just sits after a rain.
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I guess this wood will tell me if the bow style I picked for it will work or not. After all, I do not have enough experience to make a bow that is contrary to the properties of the particular wood at hand.
In this case, it will be a bend thru the handle, 55" long for a 26" draw, hoping for about 50+ lbs of draw. It's an inch and a quarter at the handle tapering down to 5/8th in tips. The back is flawless, I really took my time taking off the dried on bark. But I may back with rawhide because I can get rawhide to take a dark stain to stand out against the very pale wood.
Nothing left to do but finish it now. It is what it is! But I am taking a page off Del the Cat's bowyers diary and I am gonna put on safety glasses and a helmet when I start getting close to full tiller on the tillering tree! Might even see if I can borrow a baseball umpire's vest and facemask, hehe!
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If the rings are similar to what I described as "tight ringed",then rawhide would be a very wise idea for your design...I have had three hackberrys with such described rings(all three unbacked),and all either broke across the back in tension or lifted a splinter...its brittle wood if they are as I described to tmk.....the problem is its majority early wood,and also with such small almost indistinguishable rings and poor ratio there isn't enough meat in the first back ring to use safely as an unbacked bow in most shorter or higher stressed designs....now I'm sure you could leave it unbacked if it was looooong and no where near being super stressed
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Just realized while I was working on this ?hackberry? that it doesn't smell like hackberry. People describe it differently, but it reminds me of popcorn. This don't smell like anything.
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Just realized while I was working on this ?hackberry? that it doesn't smell like hackberry. People describe it differently, but it reminds me of popcorn. This don't smell like anything.
You mean when your heating it? I think it smells delicious when you heat it! Although when it's freshly cut, and the bark is peeling off, I think it smells sort of like piss... lol But when it gets heated, I think it smells almost as good as hickory.... almost....
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If the rings are similar to what I described as "tight ringed",then rawhide would be a very wise idea for your design...I have had three hackberrys with such described rings(all three unbacked),and all either broke across the back in tension or lifted a splinter...its brittle wood if they are as I described to tmk.....the problem is its majority early wood,and also with such small almost indistinguishable rings and poor ratio there isn't enough meat in the first back ring to use safely as an unbacked bow in most shorter or higher stressed designs....now I'm sure you could leave it unbacked if it was looooong and no where near being super stressed
Hackberry brittle ?? I've never had brittle hackberry usually you can take and fold it and it will not break under tension but all of mine is large ringed and with little early growth so I guess thts why
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If the rings are similar to what I described as "tight ringed",then rawhide would be a very wise idea for your design...I have had three hackberrys with such described rings(all three unbacked),and all either broke across the back in tension or lifted a splinter...its brittle wood if they are as I described to tmk.....the problem is its majority early wood,and also with such small almost indistinguishable rings and poor ratio there isn't enough meat in the first back ring to use safely as an unbacked bow in most shorter or higher stressed designs....now I'm sure you could leave it unbacked if it was looooong and no where near being super stressed
Same here, stuff is great in tension for me.
Hackberry brittle ?? I've never had brittle hackberry usually you can take and fold it and it will not break under tension but all of mine is large ringed and with little early growth so I guess thts why
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Yup...the explanation is easy. You both had decent enough ratio wood that didn't have 1/64" rings ;). In general any porous wood that has that size rings plus a poor ratio is going to be low grade wood for that species whatever it is. With rings as small as I mentioned WITH poor ratio needs to be designed longer and wider...if you don't it will have a high probability of breaking in tension because the early wood is so close to the back ring that at times it can be "brittle" aka weak in tension even if it is a tension strong wood...I think hickory might be the best rule breaker in this,but I've still had crappy hickory with the same poor ratio break in tension...
Jw...just what did ya cut? Does it have porous wood? I know you do t have a lot of maple up there,but I've seen young maples grows warts and look very similar to hackberry..and maple is diffuse porous..meaning no early porous wood...
Confused in Pa ???
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This wood was sent to me from Minnesota. The bark was still on it and was classic hackberry, with lines of those warts running up and down the trunk.
Beats the heck outa me! Fairly weighty stuff, so I am hoping I might have a abow outa this stave, yet.
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Blackhawk (Chris) .............I think that is the best way I have ever heard it discussed or explained! My first staves was reeeeal tight ringed osage. And I think any flaw even scraper marks on the back can cause failures. And I've made a few bow out of hickory an agree
Thanks,
DBar